‘Ah yeah, I know, but if you did want to you could.’

‘It seems an odd thing to me that a load of strangers can get together and make a collective decision about my marriage.’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Colette. Don’t mind me. I have a terrible habit of saying the first thing that comes into my head.’

Colette looked down at her wedding ring and began to turn it on her finger. She knew that Izzy smoked but she couldn’t see an ashtray anywhere or smell cigarettes. She thought about taking her tobacco from her handbag and placing it on the table to prompt her, but there would have been something almost shameful about smoking in this fussy little room.

‘How are your boys?’ Izzy asked.

It was like someone had walked up behind her and laid two heavy hands on her shoulders. She lifted her head and tried to focus on Izzy. The light coming through the window behind her had already begun to fade. It had reached that time of day when she started to bargain with herself, and she knew that as soon as she was done with this conversation she’d drive straight back to the cottage and pour herself a drink.

She placed her cup and saucer on the table. ‘Ronan is fine. He’s at Trinity now. Studying business. We’ve told him a thousand times he can go off and do whatever the hell he wants but I suppose Shaun would like him to take an interest in the factory so that one day he might at least consider taking it on. And he’s compliant, Ronan. That’s one thing about him; he’s never given us one bit of bother. It was nice when I was in Dublin because I got to see a bit more of him. We’d meet up for lunch in town. And he never blamed me for anything that happened. Unlike Barry, who hates me with every fibre of his being.’

‘Oh, teenagers!’ Izzy said. ‘They’re the worst! Our Orla only comes home from boarding school at the weekends to fight with me.’

Colette felt defeated by Izzy’s performance, this attempt to make it seem like their situations were one and the same.

‘But Carl,’ Colette said, ‘I’ve barely spoken to Carl for the past six months and for the past six weeks I’ve been living less than three miles from him. I’ve tried reasoning with his father. I’ve phoned, I’ve written letters. I’ve tried everything bar going out to the house and lying down in the driveway. I need to see my son. And I’m not going to start hanging around the school gates like a mad woman. He’s been through enough.’

‘Have you seen a solicitor?’

‘I don’t want to go down that road yet.’

‘But if Shaun is stopping you from seeing your sons, then—’

‘I need your help.’

Izzy stared back at her in silence.

‘Carl and Niall are friends,’ Colette said. ‘I thought that maybe—’

‘Not like they used to be.’

‘What?’

‘Honestly, that’s why I thought you were here. When I saw the flowers, I thought they were some kind of peace offering.’

‘Did Carl do something?’

‘They’ve been fighting. They had an unmerciful scrap in the schoolyard. Niall was brought home by Una Mallon with a cut eye.’

‘And Carl started it?’

‘No, there was a pair of them in it, but it’s very unlike Niall.’

‘Well, it’s not like Carl.’

‘Niall said that Carl has been off with him for the past few months, and when I asked him what they were fighting about, he said you.’

‘Me?’

‘Well, Carl teased Niall and Niall said something about you and the whole thing kicked off.’

‘But how would Niall know anything about me?’ Colette asked.

‘Oh, he must have heard something from one of the other kids.’

‘But kids . . . what would they know about . . .’

She watched something change in Izzy’s expression then, like she was really seeing her for the first time.

‘Well, Colette, aren’t you a naïve woman if you think you haven’t been discussed in every house in the parish.’

An old slapper – that’s what Barry had called her.

‘I have been naïve about a lot of things. But I’m ready to put them right. I need an hour with my son, to talk to him and explain my side of the story. You could take the boys away for a drive, somewhere there’s less chance of bumping into anyone we know. Tell me what time to meet you and I’ll just appear as if by coincidence. I’ll go off with Carl and talk to him and bring him back within the hour. Izzy, you don’t know what it’s been like up in that cottage night after night, knowing that your family are so close by.’

‘Then why did you leave in the first place?’

‘I have got so many things wrong. I cannot even begin to tell you the number of mistakes I’ve made. For a start, I took up with a man who turned out to be the most useless, cowardly eejit I’ve ever met. And I thought I was going to go off and take Carl with me and start a new life with that man and Shaun would just step aside and allow that to happen, and it would make us both happier. And when that all fell apart, I spent two months sleeping in my mother’s spare room when the very first thing I should have done was get in the car and drive home to my sons – and I misjudged everything.’

‘Colette, do you really think that I can go driving around the country facilitating clandestine meetings for you? And what do you think is going to happen afterwards? A child can’t keep a secret – he’s going to go straight home and tell his father that he saw you and then where will you be?’

‘You don’t know Carl like I do. And anyway, even if he does say something then at least Shaun might communicate with me, something will have happened. But the way things are at the moment, I feel like I might never see him again. And you would not be facilitating “clandestine meetings”, as you put it. You would be facilitating a meeting between a mother and her son. Do you think I’m going to run off with him or something?’

‘No, I don’t think you’d touch a hair on his head.’

‘What if James tried to stop you from seeing Niall?’

‘And what if James got wind of this? Yours wouldn’t be the only marriage in trouble.’

‘Ah, I see – that’s it.’ She rose from the sofa. ‘You’re trying to keep the peace.’

Izzy clasped her hands at her knee and stared down at the coffee table.

‘Right,’ Colette said, taking her car keys from the pocket of her cardigan, ‘if you’re not going to help me, that’s fine, but I had to ask. I won’t mention it again. And I don’t want things to be strange between us at the workshop or for you to feel like you can’t come anymore. I enjoy having you there. I mean that. I can forget about this if you can.’

Izzy nodded but she kept staring at the tea tray, and Colette felt herself to be very tall, looming over her on the sofa. She glanced at the figurines in the cabinet – their fat little faces, the weird pastoral scene they made, laid out on the shelves. She turned her gaze back on Izzy, sitting there so primly, with her legs crossed and her back straight. And Colette had to bite her tongue not to say that she knew someone who wanted a divorce, but it wasn’t her.

Chapter 8

That Friday the fleet came in laden down with fish and by midnight every pub in the town was full. When closing time came at the Reel Inn the landlord locked the doors and extinguished the neon sign outside to allow a contingent of heavy drinkers to carry on without arousing the suspicions of the Guards. Among them was Michael Breslin, the local butcher. At forty-five years old Michael still lived at home with his mother and joked that he was unlikely now to give up his bachelor ways. Most days, as soon as he got out of his blood-stained smock, he went home to give himself a rudimentary wash at the bathroom sink, changed into a shirt and blazer, and headed for the pub.

Michael was putting on a bit of a show and a group had gathered around him. They observed him carefully to be able to imitate him later. Michael was a big man who took up all the space around him and had a thick drawling Donegal accent. He was easy to impersonate. He told stories about the time the bus broke down on the way to the All-Ireland final and he ended up watching the match in a pub in Kells. He rehashed his tale about getting heatstroke when he went to Italy for the World Cup. Laughter rang out, backs were slapped, whiskeys slid down easily. Around four in the morning, Donal Mullen said his goodbyes and the men lifted their glasses to him. No sooner was he out the door than they were saying what a cute hoor he was, getting Colette Crowley ensconced in the holiday home. And he could go home now and throw the leg over Colette if he wanted to and leave that skinny bitch of a wife alone. Or indeed he could have them both. He had options now, did Donal Mullen, because that’s what it meant when you had a c-c-c-c-c – no man was sober enough to think of the word ‘concubine’. They all raised a glass to the fair Colette.

Michael was a kind of drunk he seldom was and told himself it would be best to leave. But he remained rooted at the bar. A thought had entered his mind, the thought of Colette Crowley alone in that cottage, and that thought made Michael lonely. He felt like he had run dry of chat, that he might never open his mouth again. He tried to laugh in the right places and find a way to re-enter the conversation but it was all he could do to stay steady and the thought that steadied him was Colette. When the time finally came that they were all thrown out Michael did not walk in the direction of his own house where his mother lay sleeping, but turned right out the door and began to walk along the Shore Road. It was a cloudy night, not too cold for that time of year, and Michael did not even think to pull on his coat until he was walking uphill towards the Coast Road.

The lights from the pier fell away behind him. The fields spreading out in every direction were one unbroken swathe of darkness, like a vast ocean surrounding him. But anyone watching Michael would certainly have said that he looked like a man who knew where he was going. Weaving somewhat, yes, as he made his way up the drive to the cottage, but there was no doubt he had purpose. And when finally he came to the door, he stopped so abruptly that he looked as though he might have gone right through it had he not steadied himself against the frame.